Equally Safe: Scotland’s Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls

The Scottish Government and COSLA have published a refreshed strategy for ending violence against women and girls. This is the third iteration of the strategy first published in 2014 and the Scottish Government and COSLA’s committment to preventing and eradicating this violence and addressing the underlying attitudes and systems that perpetuate it. The strategy was collaboratively developed by the Scottish Government, COSLA, and various national and local partners and stakeholders from the public and third sectors.

The strategy is based on a developing public health based approach housing and homelessness feature strongly both as risk factors and critical services for those seeking support to move on from abusive relationships.

The CIH and Scottish Women’s Aid have done a huge amount of work to improve the housing response including detailed good practice guidance published in 2019.

Further improvements are likely to be driven by proposed changes to the definition of domestic abuse and the requirement for social landlords to have a domestic abuse policy to be included the forthcoming Housing Bill.

Equally Safe provides the national policy context for these changes and the role that housing plays in eradicating violence against women and girls. This should be an important document for the whole sector. You can read it in full here.